More on the dreaded optionality problem....

["William J. Kammerer" <wkammerer@foresightcorp.com>]

While reading up on UML - as I am still not convinced that it brings
much value to modeling external business processes - I came across our
own Christian Huemer of the University of Vienna and the ebXML BP group
in the IEEE Proceedings of the 34th Hawaii International Conference on
System Sciences - 2001.  Sheesh! I've never been to Hawaii - maybe I
ought to get in on this UML modeling bandwagon.  See "Defining
Electronic Data Interchange Transactions with UML," (0-7695-0981-9/01),
at http://www.computer.org/proceedings/hicss/0981/0981toc.htm under
Track 7: Internet and the Digital Economy Track within E-Commerce
Systems Development Methodologies.

Well, I'm still not a believer in UML, but Huemer has a salient quote
that buttresses what I said last Friday regarding optionality causing
complexity:

   ...people not directly involved in message development...
   may not understand the complexity included in the [EDI
   standard] messages. This is made worse by the fact that
   standard messages include optionality without explaining
   under which conditions these options are to be used.

William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
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Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
+1 614 791-1600

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